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Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation 2012

Welcome to ACRA 2012 at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW)

The School of Engineering and Computer Science at VUW is delighted to host the 2012 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation. We welcome this opportunity to again network with an extraordinarily talented group of researchers and hope that this conference provides the opportunity for attendees to establish new collaborations, renew past acquaintances and share strategies for tapping into increasingly scare funding opportunities. The social and industrial needs of robotics and automated systems have never been greater, and Australasian research and industrial institutions are perfectly placed to exploit niche, lowmedium volume, high profit market opportunities. This is a message that our Governments and funding bodies often fail to hear.

As you have come to expect from an ACRA conference, this year the conference has attracted a number of superb submissions. All submissions were subjected to a rigorous peer review process, with each full paper reviewed by at least three members of the 37 Member program committee. A total of 44 full papers from Australia, New Zealand, Middle East and Korea were accepted for presentation and publication. The minimum recommendation for an accepted paper was 3 (out of 5), which corresponds to no reviewers recommending any form of rejection. Indeed, many of the rejected papers were of very high quality and would easily be accepted to most international conferences. We have shortlisted five papers for the Best Student Paper prize. Judging will take place during the conference and will be based on the written paper. The winner will be announced at the conference banquet. For your convenience, the proceedings are available to conference attendees on a USB memory stick. As with previous years the ACRA proceedings are freely published online at the ARAA website to promote wide dissemination of the research and encourage citations of ACRA papers. In addition to the schedule of technical papers, the programme also includes the Annual General Meeting for the ARAA and multiple social events.

Finally, we could not possibly host you in New Zealand without subjecting you to a variety of our local venues and beverages. We have endeavoured not to make any of the morning conference starts so early that you cannot fully enjoy our evening events. We trust you will enjoy the social activities as much as you will the technical discussions.